Something About ‘The Studio’ Doesn’t Sit Right With Cinephiles. That’s The Point.

We begin at the end. Not of The Studio itself, but of The Studio’s titular studio as it once was known. Patty Leigh (Catherine O’Hara), the longtime top executive at Continental Studios, has been relieved of her duties; “Her time has come and gone,” Bryan Cranston’s bespectacled, batty Continental CEO Griffin Mills tells Matt Remick (Seth Rogen, with a convincing name for a studio head), who is being considered as her successor. There’s just one problem: Matt is eager to make “films” and “movies” – a “one for them, one for him” approach – while Mills only has an interest in the latter. He says as much when he expresses concerns about Remick’s obsession with “artsy-fartsy filmmaking bullshit,” his imbalanced desire between being liked by actors and directors and “making this studio as much money as possible.” It’s as though he had a bug in Remick’s golf cart and overheard him telling his assistant, Quinn (Chase Sui Wonders), that if it were up to him, Continental would be making the next Rosemary’s Baby or Annie Hall, “or some great film that wasn’t directed by a fuckin’ pervert.”

The exchange regarding Matt’s future at the studio occurs before the 10-minute mark of the show’s first episode, “The Promotion,” a title that willingly shows its hand, as if Seth Rogen was ever not going to be the top dog on the show he co-created, co-directed, and co-wrote. Yet despite knowing exactly where Remick and Mills’ conversation will end, it’s fascinating, if unsurprising, to watch The Studio’s main character squirm into a mode where whatever his boss wants, his boss gets. In this case, the most valuable currency is the lack of a spine. “I am as bottom line-oriented as anyone in this town,” Remick insists, and Mills buys what he’s selling. “Good. Because at Continental, we don’t make ‘films,’” the David Zaslav stand-in says, flicking that icky word off to the side as if it’s a fly he found floating in his green juice. “We make movies. Mooooviessss that people want to pay to see.”

Definitionally, these two terms are synonymous, but the way The Studio consistently pits the words against one another suggests that there might be differences in what they represent. When we use the word “film,” we’re often referencing the medium, and occasionally referring to a piece of its media in an alternate way. We might even think we sound more intellectual calling something a “film” rather than a “movie,” a habit I’ve certainly been mocked for despite never overthinking this practice to such extremes. We all know what Mills is saying, though, the significance behind his emphasis on “mooooviessss” and his degradation of the other term, reducing it to the sort of things that the masses have never heard of and thus would never pay to see. My guess is that Rungano Nyoni’s On Becoming a Guinea Fowl and Dea Kulumbegashvili’s April were rejected before they could ever cross his desk.

The first movie Mills wants Remick to helm is a Kool-Aid movie. “OH, YEAH,” we’re talking about the red drink, the powdery punch with a guy who breaks through walls as its mascot. Of course, there’s more to The Studio’s first season than the torturous task of bringing The Kool-Aid Man™ to the big screen. Subplots include, but are far from limited to: Dealing with the overlong, uninteresting ending of Ron Howard’s latest work, Alphabet City; the painful process of filming a oner at golden hour in Los Angeles, a dream that Sarah Polley is desperate to realize with Greta Lee in front of the camera; rehashing the core idea behind Parker Finn’s Smile franchise in a new project called Wink, also directed by Parker Finn; a missing reel of film that threatens the fate of Olivia Wilde’s new film starring Zac Efron; and Zoe Kravitz’s fictional awards contender, Open.

As it is a television show about people, first and foremost, The Studio is also anxious to build conflicts between its central characters, even if that means crafting one (or six) too many for a ten-episode run. Quinn, who receives a promotion in the wake of Remick’s own rise, is similarly hungry to greenlight “films,” and dukes it out with Sal Saperstein (Ike Barinholtz) for meeting space, parking spots, and breakfast burritos. Continental’s marketing head (a very hectic Kathryn Hahn) provides much of the series’ comic relief, what with her jabs at Remick’s inability to walk up the stairs without tripping and all. Plus, Catherine O’Hara can’t be sidelined in a post-Schitt’s Creek series for too long, so it takes a single conversation to get Patty back in the studio’s doors as a top advisor with connections galore.

It’s this sort of experience, however, that it seems Matt Remick and co. might welcome, save for a few stray animal cruelty lawsuits. For better or worse – mostly for worse – the hijinks occurring inside A Minecraft Movie screenings have people talking about the value of movie theaters more than they have since the “Barbenheimer” craze of 2023. That example represents a rare phenomenon, while the other is probably more indicative of how far public etiquette has fallen, it being lodged so far down the tubes that it probably can’t be plunged out. But if Continental Studios were basking in the resounding success of a video game adaptation, they probably wouldn’t mind the ire that comes attached to the events that unfold during each showtime. Money trumps decency just as much as it trumps artistry. Therefore, it should be no surprise to see Matt and Sal kill Martin Scorsese’s Jonestown massacre pitch at the end of episode one solely so that they can build out their billion-dollar fruit punch franchise.

I’m not so blind that I don’t understand why that trend has emerged in 2025: Quality television, the sort that interests an audience over…